He had already put the wheels in motion. Preliminary messages had been sent to other commands, asking them for the assistance Jake thought he would require. A thousand details remained to be worked out by the various staffs involved, but the machine was in motion. The primary task Jake still had to address was setting the day and hour for the attack.
As he stood looking at the charts of Cuba that covered the wall in the planning space, Jake and his staff wrestled with the timing question. Captain Gil Pascal, the chief of staff, argued that the operation should be delayed until such time as U-2s could fly a photo recon mission and get the very latest enemy troop positions.
“Vargas made a speech today,” Jake replied. The speech and a translation had played several times on television. Jake had even stopped once to watch it.
“Hue City and Guilford Courthouse are racing for the Florida Straits,” Toad Tarkington argued. “This battle group is underway. The Cubans may find out about these ship movements and put two and two together and get their wind up. They may be able to put twenty-four hours of delay to better use than we can.”
“That’s the nub of it, isn’t it?” Jake mused, and stood looking at the charts, trying to imagine how it would be.
Sure, things would go wrong. People were going to have the wrong frequencies, go to the wrong places, everything that could go wrong would. Still, the missions were simple.
The real issue, Jake concluded, was the follow-up. What were you going to do if the troops ran into more trouble than they could handle? How would you extract them? How would you destroy the target?
Jake called the Pentagon on the satellite telephone. He was patched through via land line to General Totten at the White House.
After the usual greetings, Jake said, “Sir, two points. First, I would like to address the proposal to delay the operation until Patriot SAM batteries can be moved into southern Florida. If we pop a Cuban missile over southern Florida the cloud of viruses may drift over to Miami or Tampa. I don’t think we gain anything by waiting for Patriot batteries.”
“We’ve about reached the same conclusion here, but there has been vigorous debate. What is your second point?”
“In my view, the key to getting this done is our willingness to do whatever is required to accomplish the mission.”
“The president is listening, Admiral. Explain yourself.”
“As I see it, General, our choice is to either wait until we are convinced we can pull it off, or go now before the Cubans have a chance to garrison these sites with troops. The lab in Havana presents problems that the other sites do not. We will have to tackle the lab after the missiles are destroyed.”
“Okay.”
“If the troops assaulting the silos run into more Cubans than they can handle, we must either add more forces or extract our men. If we elect to extract our people, we still have the problem of the missile in the silo and we will have handed the Cubans a victory in a fight we cannot afford to lose.”
“What do you propose?”
“We won’t be able to go back later with more people. We get one bite of the apple, sir. I propose that you authorize me to use whatever force is required to accomplish the mission, short of nuclear weapons.”
Jake Grafton heard the president loudly say, “I’m not giving him or anybody else the authority to risk a catastrophic release of toxins. No.”
“We’ll call you back,” General Totten said, and hung up.
Mercedes went to stay with Dona Maria Vieuda de Sedano, to cook for her and clean and do whatever needed to be done. She had stayed with her mother-in-law in the past, after her husband, Jorge, died — fortunately the two women genuinely liked each other.
She and Dona Maria ate lunch on the little porch of the bungalow so they could enjoy the breeze blowing in from the sea. It was strong today, whipping the palm fronds and rippling the sugarcane. Little puffy clouds threw severe shadows that raced over the ground.
Doña Maria had gone back inside for a nap and Mercedes was sewing a blouse together when a limo drove up and Maximo got out. He came up the short walk, paused at the steps, and looked at her. “I thought I would find you here,” he said.
“Mima’s sleeping.”
“I came to see you.”
She nodded, continued working on the blouse. He stayed on the dirt and scraggly grass, walked around so the porch railing was between them.
“Vargas made a speech this morning. It was on television.”
“Hmm,” she said. Doña Maria did not have a television, and Maximo knew that.
“He is the president now.”
“I have heard.”
“Did he really kill Fidel?”
“No.”
Her thread broke. She got out the spool of thread and rethreaded the needle.
“Would you tell me if he had?”
“What did you come for, Maximo?”
“I need your help.”
She knotted the thread and began a new seam.
“You don’t think much of me, do you?”
“I don’t think of you at all.”
He leaned on the porch railing, crossing his arms. “Where did Fidel hide the gold?”
“I didn’t know he had any,” she said, not looking up from her work. “He didn’t even have gold in his teeth.”
“The gold pesos the government called in after the revolution — that gold.”
“I have no idea,” she said.
“I think you do. I think Fidel told you.”
“Think what you like.”
“He wouldn’t let the secret die with him.”
“Maximo, look at me. If I had a pocketful of gold, would I be sitting here on the porch of a tiny, ninety-five-year-old bungalow with a thatched roof beside the road to Varadero, sewing myself a shirt?”
“I don’t think you have it — I think you know where it is.”
She snorted and went back to the needle and the seam.
“You don’t want the gold for yourself, I know. But I need it. Not all of it, just a little. I must get out of Cuba.”
A strand of hair fell across her face. She brushed it back.
“We could leave together, Mercedes, if we had some of that gold. You could go anywhere on earth you wanted, live the rest of your life without worry, without fear, without need. Think of it! A new life, a new beginning. How much of this heat and dirt and hopeless poverty do you want, anyway?”
“Forget the gold, Maximo. If there is any, it is not for you.”
He backed away from the railing, stood in the sun with the sea wind playing at his hair. “Think about it,” he said. “Vargas is no fool; he wants the gold too. One of these days he will send Santana around to see you. Think about what you are going to say to him when he comes.”
He walked to the waiting limo. The driver turned the car in the road and headed back toward Havana.
Toad Tarkington was the only person in the room with Jake as they waited for the chairman of the joint chiefs to call from the White House.
“What do you want from them, Admiral?”
“I want the authority to do whatever I have to do to destroy those viruses,” Jake Grafton explained. “Once the shooting starts, we have to win.”
“What if the president won’t give you that authority?”
“He has a right to say that. We’ll go do our best, and if we can’t cut it without using Tomahawks or laser-guided weapons, then we’ll call him up and say so.”
“What is the problem here?” Toad demanded. “If there is a toxin release he won’t be the guy responsible. Fidel Castro and Alejo Vargas are the guilty parties. This is their country.”